Minestra — the soup-base that serves as a meal
Minestra di fave secche (dried fava bean soup)
EverydayDocumented🍄 🧂facile2 h (plus soaking)
A thick soup of dried fava beans slowly simmered with a drizzle of oil, poured over a slice of stale bread. Nourishing, unpretentious, ready to be eaten quickly.
Why this dish? Michelangelo's anchor says it: bread, wine, cheese and dried legumes made up the bulk of his table. The dried fava bean, an Old World legume cultivated in Tuscany since antiquity, was the food of the poor and the busy artisan — exactly the food of a man who ate standing up to return to his marble.
What, you think I'd waste my time at table? The stone awaits me, and the Holy Father too. You soak the beans the night before, then let them simmer all day with an onion, a sage leaf, and the oil from our hills. You pour this mush over a heel of hard bread, add a dash of raw oil, and eat standing, spoon in one hand — I hold the chisel in the other. It's little, but it's what a man needs who works from dawn to night.
Ingredients
- •Dried shelled fava beans — two handfuls per person (nourishing base)
- •Onion — one small (aromatic base)
- •Fresh sage — a few leaves (flavor)
- •Tuscan olive oil — as desired (binding and finish)
- •Stale Tuscan bread — one slice per bowl (base)
- •Salt — a pinch (seasoning)
How it was made : Dried legumes (fava beans, chickpeas, lentils) were the protein pillar of the Tuscan lower classes, as the common bean did not yet exist in Europe before the Americas. These soups were cooked in an earthenware pot by the fire, sometimes all day, and the hard bread served both as thickener and support — nothing was wasted.